


Nukumori (Warmth)

by Guardian Of The Lotus (DistantStorm)



Series: Fictober 2019 [16]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gratuitous Descriptions of Light, PTSD, Self-Harm, Shadowkeep, oc: Miyu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 09:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21052439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistantStorm/pseuds/Guardian%20Of%20The%20Lotus
Summary: Miyu is having some difficulties processing what's happening on the Moon. Zavala only ever wants to help.Written for day 16 of the Fictober 2019 Challenge on Tumblr: "Listen. No, really listen."





	Nukumori (Warmth)

The door is locked when he enters. His Ghost works the mechanism for him with ease.

"That's funny," Adelaide, his Ghost informs him, "Miyu never locks the door. Maybe she's not home yet? She could be with Lilith-"

Zavala holds up a finger to silence her. "Do you hear that?"

She turns in the direction he's facing but does not run more than a preliminary scan. Quieter, she admits, "No, I don't."

"Listen." Adelaide shrugs her fins. "No, really listen."

Finally, she does. "It sounds like… scrubbing, almost? But, she's not doing dishes." They're in the entryway, leading to the kitchen. They can see the sink from there, no Miyu in front of it.

"Tamashii."

No answer. Guardian and Ghost share a look of concern. Zavala walks nearly silent through their flat, taking care to make sure his feet on the hardwood make some sound as he approaches.

It's not scrubbing that they heard. It's scratching.

The water is running in the washroom, some of it pink with blood. Miyu, his gentle, sweet Miyu is clawing at her arms, as if to flay off the skin there. Her Light glows bright across the damaged skin, but not to heal, as if she's trying to burn herself from the inside out.

Zavala swallows hard. "Oh, Miyu," He rumbles sadly, reaching for her.

The Warlock shrinks away, frustrated, terrified tears pouring down her face. "I can-" She scores her skin once more. "I can feel it. The Dark. It's on me and it won't go away."

Of course. She's spent the last three days in and around the Hellmouth. It lingers, Eris and Ikora say. Like a toxic miasma, or an aura, a shadow eclipsing the Light itself, clinging to her. He can feel it like an unpleasant tingle, but it's not like contagion, and not terribly strong. This lingering essence seems interested only in the party that has contracted it.

Naturally, there's a psychological aspect to it, too. These nightmares making what would normally be manageable for their kind into an insurmountable situation. Little rest, high stress, revisiting old traumas… Guardians may be immortal, but they retain their humanity. He cannot stress it enough. They endure so much, and yet they keep on. The cost to their mental health? It shows. Humans are not meant to live as long as they do, Light or not. And sometimes, all the coping mechanisms in the world don't make a speck of difference against the occult. Not alone.

"Miyu, stop," He urges, softly, taking care not to make her feel trapped. The washroom is small but he slides behind and around her, so that the door is not blocked off.

"I'm sorry," She says, fingers shaking, bloodied, as she pulls them away from her arms. "I just, I can't-"

"It's okay," He says, holding his arms open once more. "Come here."

"I can't," She shakes her head, voice rising in volume thanks to her frustration. "I have to get it off and it's not-!" Miyu slams her palms against the sink, not hard enough to break it, but the pipework rattles and blood spatters. It has to hurt, but she's already crying and carrying on, it likely doesn't make much difference. "I have to get it off me. I have to. I have to," She repeats, and the clawing begins again. Her Light surges but seems repelled, her internalization of her suffering doing her no favors.

Zavala cannot bear to watch. She'll shred herself to the bone at this rate, compelled to obsess over the obstruction of her Light by this cloying abyss. He wordlessly instructs Adelaide to report this behavior to Ikora. Certainly Miyu cannot be the only one suffering in such a way. Countless Guardians have been to Luna since the Hive began making their presence known.

When she begins bashing her wrists against the countertop he's forced to intervene, reaching from behind and pulling her arms away from her, hands wrapped around her blood-slicked wrists.

"Stop," He commands, but it's less authoritative. More frightened. She's frantically jerking her arms against his hold, trying to get free.

"Don't touch it," She begs. "I don't want it to get to you, too. I have to get it off of me and nothing is-"

"Miyu."

She still fights him, trying to pull away, even though it only hurts her more. She'll break her own arms trying to get free of him, he realizes. This obsessive behavior is sure to come with paranoia.

"I'm not strong enough," She sobs, pulsing with golden Light. "I can't burn it away and I have to. I have to make it stop. It feels like it's spreading-" It isn't, it's in her head. Most of this is in her head. He needs her to calm down, she's not being rational.

"Let me help you," He murmurs, voice low and soft, his cheek pressed against her hair. "Please."

"But-"

"_Onegaishimasu_, Beloved. Please. Allow me."

Miyu stops trying to resist his hold, looking at her arms and hands like they need to be removed from her being.

"Can Tamashii heal you?"

"I sent him away until everything was fixed. I don't want-" She chokes on a sob, "I don't want him to see me like this."

"Come out," Zavala says gaze pointed at the doorway. "I know you haven't gone far." She gasps through more sobs when her skittish companion hovers through the door, wilting at the damage she inflicted upon herself, but Zavala molds himself to her back, his voice a soothing rumble. "He's your partner. He wouldn't leave you, even if you asked him to." Blue eyes look up at the cyan optic. "Right?"

"Right," Tamashii agrees, voice dimmed by sadness. "Even if-"

Zavala nods. "I know," He says soothingly when they both flinch, Guardian and Ghost like two halves of the same soul. The physical injuries her Ghost can heal. The rest may very well remain in her mind regardless of his intervention. "It will be alright."

Red and white fins spin as he works, Miyu trembling while Tamashii casts beams of sweeping, healing Light over her wounds.

"That's all of it," He tells Zavala, and Miyu whimpers. "All that I can get," He revises.

"Thank you." Zavala casts him a gaze that says he'll handle the rest, and the Ghost disappears into a motes of Light.

"Am I crazy? I know things are-" She turns her head, red-rimmed eyes watching him. "They're making us all afraid and I-"

Zavala shushes her, wrapping his arms around her middle, careful to keep her hands at her side. "No. You are not crazy."

"Eris said she could smell it on me," Miyu admits, terrified. "I don't want it on me."

"Did you-"

"Three times," She takes a gulp of air. The shower stall is still wet, and he’s certain she’s scrubbed herself raw beneath her clothes. "Didn't help."

"Okay." He brings his hands to cover hers when they twitch. She's panicking, he knows the signs of a panic attack coming on. He needs to move her now, tangling together on the tiled floor is certainly not comfortable. "Let's sit down in the living room," He instructs.

"On... the couch?"

Zavala shakes his head. He sits with his back against the bottom part of it instead, and motions for her to sit on the floor between his parted legs, so that her back is to his front. She sits like an animal in a cage, slumped forward. He watches her scratch her left arm idly and reaches for her fingers lest she redo the damage that's been undone.

"Lean on me," He instructs. "It's alright. I've got you."

"I don't-"

He pulls her back against him, but doesn't force her still. She clenches her fists, trying to keep the afflicted parts of herself away from him."Trust me, please. I'm going to make it better."

"How?"

An inhale, deep, and disciplined is followed by a controlled exhale, Zavala repeating this several times. She doesn't have to look to know his eyes are closed; His forehead is pressed to her shoulder.

He is a rock. Grounding, centering. Or at least, he would be, if this weren't so disturbing to her. Instead, in the space between his breaths, he feels her panic and paranoia, and the urge to gather her up tightly against him. But she needs to see. To feel. To know.

It starts as a spark. A single strike of flint and steel inside his belly, before he allows it to curl outward.

"Did you know," Zavala begins, when her breath catches in her throat as it hits her, what he's doing, "That I am the only Vanguard mentor capable of wielding all three ability types?"

He lifts his hands from his thighs and holds them out, palms up, in front of her. His flame is a deeper, molten orange. Not sunny and yellow-white, like hers. Earthy and unwavering, like an eternal pilot light. A beacon.

Miyu shakes her head, breathing sharply in disbelief. Never, in all their time together, has he displayed this power to her. To anyone.

"Give me your hands, _Anata_," He murmurs against her ear. "Let me help."

The warmth he generates is unusual - with him, the Void is like mineral water and brisk, blessed clarity - but she feels emotion ensnared within these flames. This is sensual. Close. An extension of the soul, bright and kind and so very precious for him to be sharing.

She can't help but feel drawn to it, enchanted by it all around her. It feels like she's burning but it doesn't hurt, like it's her own Light, but it's not. It's patient and gentle, healing in a way hers could only hope to be.

Miyu's shaking fingertips brush his palms and she flinches, the prickling numbness of the latent Dark upon her desperately trying to retain feeling like pain until she presses her hands more firmly into his. He knows what he’s doing. Of course he does. He does not boast about it, but he is so much more versed in how to foster and protect one’s Light than he lets on.

"The Hive's magic is seeped in death, sorrow, and despair. They revel in our suffering," He reminds her, when she relaxes, finally, finally feeling like she's no longer under the malignant influence of the Hive. Her breaths still come fast, and thus he pulls their hands together, in a sort of pile across her lap. "We will defeat them with the opposite. Our Light will not waver. Not so long as we continue to celebrate life, find joy even in our darkest moments, and foster love."

She brings her knees up and leans to the side, curling up in the sanctuary of his embrace. It takes a long time for her breaths to even out, especially since she's still weeping, but he continues to manifest solar light, soothing her to her to the core.

It is not lost on him that her head stays pressed against his heartbeat, that her fingertips follow the patterns of aura across her fingers. Subconscious, half-aware gestures, a come-down from such a high-stress state. He’d expected as much, had seen it plenty of times before. After a long, long while, he hums in a wordless question and her arms come up and around his neck easily, their lips meeting in a gentle kiss as her Light - angelic and reverent - washes over him in grateful praise.

“Thank you,” Miyu whispers against his lips, achingly fragile. She’s still unsteady when they rise together, but her eyes are clear. It will take a while to recenter herself, but he’ll be there the whole time.


End file.
